(2) In the Art Nouveau circles of the 1880s and 1890s there was an influential rebirth of the Rococo. The architects of this rebirth were the brothers de Goncourt. "They were deeply attached to an idealized image of social hierarchy and cultural grace in by-gone regimes. The brothers operated in much the same way that John Ruskin did in England, using an aesthetic measure from the past to judge the deformations of the industrial and commercial present. Ruskin's vision was medieval and social, the de Goncourt's vision was Rococo and elite." Ref.1 Over time there was a public institutionalization of the Rococo, making it a legitimate part of the French national culture. In the eighteenth century the Rococo movement had itself been the "Style Moderne". It was a style which glorified nature as a subject. Rococo architecture was constructed thinly and appeared fragile on the surface. Common elements included "animated and asymmetrical flowering trellises of plants, the scroll and serpentine fan shapes of grottoes and shells." Ref.2 "Le meuble rococo perd de plus en plus son independence; il s'integre a creer l'harmonie."Ref.3 The success of the sinuous design with its autonomous curves almost eliminated the straight line entirely. Because Rococo seemed restless, the most successful Rococo revival designs were usually non-utilitarian pieces.
(3) The artists of the Belgian Art Nouveau style desired to assert an individual vision into the function of the materials. They had two objectives: Acknowledge political alliances (usually socialist) while subordinating a space to beautification. The first half of such an artisan goal was associated with the Monde Nouveau, an industrial society that gave poetic expression to the world of labor. It was aligned with the objectives of the "free-thinkers" of the groups Les XX, La Libre Esthetique, and L'art moderne, each of which found direction in the Belgian Workers' Party. In creating art for the Belgian Workers' Party, an artist found himself able to regulate every stage of his own handicraft. Yet he was in constant competition with technologies which could produce essentially the same items more quickly. It was not unusual for manufacturers to create ready-made Art Nouveau elements to attach superficially to the exterior of the house. Examples of such decorations include ceramic tiles, cast iron railings, and carved stone or etched glass panels. Inevitably with quantity a product lost its individuality. The artist, on the other hand, prized originality and quality in a finished product that only handicraft could achieve. The Art Nouveau artist, fulfilling his duty to create visually pleasing designs, created designs that set up a dialogue of growth and exhibited both greater precision and more graceful geometry than earlier Rococo ones.
(4) Perhaps the most characteristic shape of the Art Nouveau is the "whiplash curve." It has been compared to "a swirling rope suddenly stopped in its circular motion".Ref.4 It is a volute ending in a hook, and it is found in architectural contexts on a variety of gates, moldings, and carpets. The motif is often associated with heterogeneous combinations of materials: iron and stone, iron and wood, and stone and wood. Thus materialized, Art Nouveau designs looked pliable and weightless in frames imagined by their creators. Victor Horta's architecture became synonymous with the style called Art Nouveau. His buildings in and around the Belgian capital were known for both their technological eccentricities and psychological symbolism. When he was commissioned to design the Maison de Peuple he emphasized the relationship between art and the working class by using materials "of the people" (primarily glass, iron, and steel). "To Horta they symbolized the light and air that had been denied to laborers in their own homes." Ref.5
(5) Horta used architecture aggressively. He theorized from nature, basing designs on the bodies of insects while incorporating vine and seaweed movements into a structure. At the same time, the Art Nouveau style used to pay compliments to a woman in and by means of her home. He created splendid environments for this purpose by utilizing ready-made mirrors. These environments have been interpreted as settings which would "reflect with mirrors her own emancipation".Ref.6
(6) The Rococo and the Art Nouveau traditions both exhibited a strong Oriental influence. The organisms found in Japanese art provided a precedent for what came to be called in the nineteenth century the Style Nature. In the Rococo period, the admiration for Oriental crafts was so great that designs were sometimes sent to the Far East for execution. Later, in the nineteeth century, individuals such as Sigfried Bing and the de Goncourt brothers steeped themselves in the tradition of Japanese lacquers, aesthetic withdrawal, and self-cultivation. Bing characterized Japanese artists as "the exponents of a national temperament in a decade marked by the search for political unity, and for a new power to bind the nation, one in which nature eliminates social differences."Ref.7 Bing was intrigued by the work of the nineteenth century Japanese printmakers, citing their extreme suavity in an exhibition of Japanese engraving, displayed in collaboration with the Central Union of the decorative arts and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
(7) At the center of the modern applied arts was the quest for intimate decoration. It began with a conceptualization of the woman as the preserver of the home because in the home lay her identity. During the Rococo period, feminine objects became erotic substitutes for real women. For example, furniture displayed new gender overtones: la causeuse, la bergere, la chiffonniere, and la toilette. Mirrors and veneers were thought of as having multiple layers of superficiality or a deceptive depth which typically identified the female personality. Furthermore, the woman's organic curves were echoed in the decorative arts to express harmony of the parts to one another. Woman was also popularly described as a delicate spirit in communion with flowers, birds, and butterflies. However, in reaction to the feminist movements of the late 1800s, women were sometimes seen as personifications of the sins of the flesh. The woman was seen as "jealous of man's exclusive capacity for spiritual transcendence and she was thought to be intent upon doing everything in her power to drag the male back to her erotic realm. Even if she had no overtly vicious intentions woman's presumed incapacity for independent thought and her inherently parasitic being led her to interfere with the intellectual development of the male."Ref.8 La femme nouvelle challenged this old role as an object d'art while insisting upon a separation of "production from reproduction."Ref.9 The woman was rejecting her place as the anchor of domesticity. Some scholars of the late nineteenth century equated these changes with dangerous sexual inversion. She was called an "Hommesse" in journals because she aspired toward a higher education or a professional career.
(8) During the 1880s and 1890s interest grew in the psychology of the human mind grew dramatically. Searching for a defense against the atmosphere of artificiality amid the modern age of industrialization, artists sought to appeal directly to the inner world of an audience. Art Nouveau provided a visual language for the new body of medical knowledge called the "Psychologie Nouvelle," which established that the external world acts directly upon the internal world of the nerves. Interior space was suddenly transformed into a "chambre mentale". While many scientists formulated theories of the dream as allegory, often artists aimed to communicate the meaning of a detail through mere suggestion. The new trend meant to express the inexpressible by conveying to the viewer emotional states similar to those experienced by the artist.
(9) The meaning of the doorway as a symbol in fin de siecle poetry is rather elusive. Most often it is used to imply the unavoidable meeting of a force stronger than man. The door represents a temporary security. For the symbolist, the entryway meant dread, awe, or painful separation; all emotions associated with the unknown. It is a type of spatial imagery which is inseparable from those human descriptions of spirituality that suggest but never tell the truth. But each poet's or artist's interpretation differed slightly. In Freud's theories of architectural dream symbolism in The Interpretation of Dreams, the body is likened to a house with rooms which usually represent a woman. The connection of a door to a room which may be opened or locked leads to clues about the sexual availability of the female. In Emile Verhaeren's poetry the door becomes "a blind port which has its eyes closed to life and is an emblem of non- voyage".Ref.10 Verhaeren refers to the "stitched net of silence" and a "void in the atmosphere"Ref.11 which is inescapable. Likewise for Maurice Maeterlinck, the door was a source of mystery. He says in The Intruder: "We do not quite succeed in closing it, there must be something between the doors"; and more plainly in La Grande Porte: "Nous sommes tous en atente devant cette porte qui ne separe pas seulement la vie de la morte, mais encore le passe de l'avenir, le connu de l'inconnu et l'homme de son Dieu." The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, a member of Les XX, suggests yet another meaning within the doorway. This piece turns the sinuous physicality of the Rococo into visions of nervous complication. A struggle ensues between reason and abandonment and the dissolving powers of a dream. Rodin reacts here "against positivism,"Ref.12 profound despair and suffering. An individual's intellect becomes the judge, "selecting and sifting among ideas through the agency of the watcher at the gate. In creative minds the watcher is withdrawn, as to emphasize the paralytic powers of thought."Ref.13 In speaking about the emotions conveyed in Gates of Hell, Rodin states "Shrouded in darkness, the memory phantoms aspire toward the light but do not attempt to ascend to it. Yet when I go to sleep, suddenly all of these memories, sensing that I have removed the obstacle, that I have opened the door that kept them in the recesses of consciousness, set themselves in motion. They rise up, they agitate and perform an immense dance of death. And all together they race toward the gate that has just opened up."Ref.14
(10) The Art Nouveau doorway tempts the art historian to discover a societal passage. The portal has always separated two worlds, the public exterior from the private interior, but it has never been a barricade against change. Neither side of the door is immune to the evolution of architecture nor to the ideology behind its designs. Thus, ultimately, an individual's daily perspective and priorities depend upon the side of the door on which he is standing.
Ref.1: Silverman, Debora L. Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, p. 23.
Ref.2: Ibid., p. 28.
Ref.3: Brady, Patrick. Rococo Style Versus Enlightenment Novel. Geneve: Editions Slatkine, 1984, p. 57.
Ref.4: Borsi, Franco. Victor Horta. New York: Rizzoli Publishers, 1991, p. 21.
Ref.5: Levine, Sura. Politics and the Graphic Arts of the Belgian Avante-Garde. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992, p. 60.
Ref.6: Borsi, p. 14.
Ref.7: Silverman, p. 287.
Ref.8: Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity. New York: Oxford Press, 1986.
Ref.9: Silverman, p. 63.
Ref.10: Friedman, Donald F. The Symbolist Dead City. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990, p. 120.
Ref.11: Ibid., p. 39.
Ref.12: Silverman, p. 306.
Ref.13: Ibid., p. 310.
Ref.14: Ibid., p. 309.
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